Perry Friend Questions Need For PhDs

Documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News on Friday under the Texas Open Records demonstrated close involvement of Austin businessman Jeff Sandefer in the development of professor evaluations and reward programs at Texas A&M, and suggest the same controversial programs may be attempted at the University of Texas.

Sandefer, who developed what he calls “Seven Breakthrough Solutions” for higher education, copied new UT regent Brenda Pejovich in a September 29 email commenting on a Chronicle of Higher Education article about the A&M evaluations.

“Two important notes:

1. We need to measure the number of students taught per professor versus what that faculty member is paid, instead of measuring the number of classes taught. Many senior faculty members will teach classes with only a few students per class. (We also need to frame the question carefully to make sure ALL faculty compensation and benefits are included, and define the word “taught” to mean that the faulty member, not a TA, spends at least 90 percent of the face time with students. Without these two clarifications, faculty will game answers.)

2. (Chancellor Mike) McKinney WAY over complicated the data by using the funding formula as a measure of revenue for teaching. The funding formula is a politically derived measure from the Legislature that pays much for a PhD hour taught than and undergraduate hour. Again, this encourages subsidizing PhD’s and encourages us to overproduce PhD’s who later cannot get a job. The simplest and most accurate measure is again $ per student per class taught. For the most efficient faculty, this will be $50 to $100 per student per class. For the least productive tenured faculty, the cost will be $20,000 to $30,000 per student per class. The fact that McKinney’s numbers show that most faculty are “in the black” shows that his methodology is flawed.”

Gov. Rick Perry introduced Sandefer and his “solutions” to all of his university regents in 2008. Sandefer’s most controversial ideas include paying professors based on student evaluations, separating teaching from research and seceding from the national accreditation system.

Perry named Pejovich to the UT Board of Regents in February. Both Sandefer and Pejovich are on the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has endorsed Sandefer’s ideas. The TPPF’s executive director, Brooke Rollins, was also copied on the email.

In another email to A&M regent Phil Adams, Sandefer quotes Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, saying, “I think you have to decide whether achievement is the route to self esteem or self esteem is the route of achievement. I think you guys think self esteem is the route to achievement and I think you are wrong.”

In his email, Sandefer applies Summers’ quote to people resisting his efforts to de-emphasize research: “We believe that serving students and productive research lead to real prestige – prestige that is earned the old fashioned way You guys seem to believe that prestige – a self congratulatory collection of scholars writing articles that few people read – will somehow lead to great teaching and productive research. So far all the evidence shows that your experiment is a failure, leading to poorly prepared students and skyrocketing costs.”

In an October email to his father, which then was passed along to Regent Phil Adams, Sandefer refers to an article in the Bryan Eagle about proposed changes in a new teaching reward system he had sought. He calls the article “intentional and devious” and suggests “Imposters” at Texas A&M are pretending to back reform while secretly opposing it.

“If I wanted to smoke out who was being genuine and who was being disingenuous, here’s what I’d suggest: Make the issue of which questions to use non-negotiable. Say ‘we have to be able to easily rank the best and worst teachers’ – then look for a reaction. If you see one, or the person pushes back hard, you may be dealing with an Imposter.”

In another exchange with his father, Sandefer says, “The Imposters think the Regents are clowns and that they can say one thing and just blow this past them. I think this shows unbelievable arrogance, even for Imposters.”